The Star is looking at the four principal modes of getting around the city. Today: the subway.

The state of the Bloor/Yonge station southbound platform at 8:45 a.m. has me agog.

“Is this normal?” I ask a friendly EMS attendant.

“It’s Monday,” he shrugs.

“Packed in like livestock” is an appropriate description.

As someone accustomed to cycling around the city, the task of finding my way by transit — specifically subway — from Islington and Finch to the Star’s office at 1 Yonge St. now seems like an exercise in frustration.

The journey begins at 7:30 a.m. But before I can ride the rails I have to ride the rubber. The only transit option to the Islington subway station — on the western edge of the Bloor-Danforth line — is bus.

Turns out a large part of my commute is spent just getting to the subway. Forty-five minutes on the No. 37 bus delivers me and about 50 others to Islington station, where I shuffle onto an eastbound train bound for Bloor station.

After just three station stops to Jane, the car is full. We settle in and the train lurches along, jostling those passengers stuck standing.

Within minutes I find myself pitched into the chest of a stranger, my arms wrapped tightly around his waist to keep from falling. “Sorry,” I mumble.

I get off at Bloor, squeezing my way into the wall of people headed my way, and am swept along. We are headed to the southbound platform, the final part of the ride. (I wish I could say more about this, but my arms were pinned too tightly to my sides to take notes. I tried to raise my pen once, but only managed to write on someone’s pants.)

Finally, I get off at King, take two minutes to buy coffee, and walk along Yonge toward the lake. Within minutes I’ve arrived at One Yonge St., to learn that fellow reporter Brendan Kennedy, who cycled the same trip, has been here for 20 minutes.

My ride has taken an hour and 45 minutes. Add the same amount again for my return, and the day’s journey adds up to nearly half the workday. Not cool.

Mayoral Platforms

ROCCO ROSSI — Build 2 kilometres of subway and one station annually in the suburbs or 1 kilometre and two stations in the city • Convert Eglinton light rail line to subway

JOE PANTALONE — Priority is Transit City plan • Wants a train between Union Station and Pearson airport electrified.

GEORGE SMITHERMAN — Turn the Scarborough RT into an above-ground subway • Extend the Sheppard subway • Extend the tunnel on the Eglinton light rail line

Both the Yonge-University and Bloor-Danforth subways are already running at capacity, with 30,000 and 25,500 riders per hour, respectively, in the morning rush.

Bottlenecks, particularly at Bloor and Finch stations during the rush hours, are the result of commuters streaming downtown from York Region and a lack of platform capacity at Bloor Station.

Never enough

Everybody wants more subways but the city hasn’t found a way to pay for them, although an extension of the Spadina line to York Region with six new stations is expected to open in 2015.

The TTC puts the cost of building subways at about $300 million per kilometre compared with $75 million to $100 million per kilometre for light rail or streetcars above ground. The difference in price becomes much less if you’re tunneling for light rail, as Metrolinx and the TTC expect to do for about 10 kilometres on the Eglinton Crosstown line.

Toronto has been criticized for its failure to expand its subways, and new tunnels are being held out by several mayoral candidates as a panacea for the city’s transit ills.

It’s just a stubway

It’s been described as the subway to nowhere and has remained a wedge between those who say it should never have been built and those who believe it should be longer since before the Sheppard line opened in November 2002.

Its scant 5.5-km length is a scab that won’t heal with many Scarborough residents, who are among the worst-served transit riders in Toronto.

They want a subway rather than the light rail line Metrolinx plans to build to extend service from the subway terminus at Don Mills to west of Consumer’s Rd.

Service disruptions

It’s not enough that commuters are crammed into subways like the proverbial sardines. More than 1,000 delays, amounting to about 117 hours last year, figure in the top 10 complaints the TTC receives each year.

Transit officials get a lot more grief over surface delays — 2,149 so far this year, compared with only 594 about the subway.

- Tess Kalinowski

Solutions:

Platform edge doors

Widely used in Asia and Europe to keep people and garbage from falling on the subway tracks, the screens have already been added to the TTC’s burgeoning capital wish-list.

But at $5 to $10 million per station, the project is subject to the usual caveat: funding. There isn’t any.

The platform edge doors will also have to wait until the TTC has finished installing its new computerized signaling system, called Automatic Train Control, a prerequisite because it allows the train doors to line up precisely with the platform gates.

The TTC says that ATC and platform edge doors, combined with the new Toronto Rocket subway trains that hold 10 per cent more people, have the potential to expand the Yonge line’s capacity by more than 40 per cent.

Downtown relief line (DRL)

The idea of a subway that would run from the east end of the Danforth line — possibly Pape or Kennedy station to Queen or Union — has been kicking around for about 30 years as a way to alleviate pressure on the south end of the Yonge-University subway.

A DRL would immediately attract more riders to transit, says Paul Bedford, former head planner for Toronto, who sits on the Metrolinx board. And it avoids the need for a billion-dollar Bloor station reno, which would entail massive disruptions to riders.

Connect the Yonge and Spadina lines

Divert some of the crowd off the north end of the Yonge line by building a connection to Downsview station.

Private partners

This frequently floated idea is dismissed as poison by critics.

While there have been some disastrous experiences with privatizing transit operations, such as in England, others have received better reviews, notably Vancouver’s $2 billion Canada Line, a light rail line built by SNC-Lavalin, which has a contract to operate it for 30 years.

Although the Canada Line has been criticized for costing about twice the original budget, its operation and engineering have been widely admired.

One regional transit system

Even before the province’s regional agency, Metrolinx, was up and running there were hot rumours that Queen’s Park wanted to take over the TTC, which provides about 85 per cent of all transit trips in the Toronto area.

While that speculation has abated, it has occasionally surfaced in the past few months when Mayor David Miller and TTC chair Adam Giambrone protested the province’s decision to defer some of the promised funding for Transit City projects, and in the recent municipal-provincial tussle over the Presto smartcard versus the TTC’s plan to explore an open payment system instead.

While there’s grumbling across the region about the TTC’s high-handed approach to Queen’s Park, a provincial takeover makes no sense, according to transit advocate Steve Munro.

- Tess Kalinowski

More on thestar.com

We value respectful and thoughtful discussion. Readers are encouraged to flag comments that fail to meet the standards outlined in our
Community Code of Conduct.
For further information, including our legal guidelines, please see our full website
Terms and Conditions.